


Carnival

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25571389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: A carnival comes to Korea.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Carnival

The carnival that came to Uijeongbu was an American one - full of cheap crackerjack prizes, colored lights, that calliope tune no one could ever name, sawdust over the dirt, fried ethnic foods, and tilt-a-whirl type rides. It also contained a touring menagerie of prize winning heifers and hogs, peacocks, a mule said to be as clever as a fifth-grade boy, and a real Lippizaner stallion. It was the promise of horseflesh that drew Colonel Potter to release his officers; he would never treat himself while denying them. 

Radar was at his side, ever eager to make the acquaintance of anything with hooves, a snout, or feathers. Potter had promised the boy they’d rescue any animal (of reasonable size) they could and add it to  _ Radar’s _ menagerie. The clerk already had a name picked out: Henry. If the creature in question was a girl, he’d happily informed Hawk, it was easy enough to upgrade Henry to Henrietta. If he could make large enough, beseeching enough eyes to get  _ two  _ creatures, the second one would be Braymore (Henry’s middle name). The Blake family would be amused by this when Hawk wrote them; ever since Henry had (wrongly) been reported dead in a plane crash, his name had become talismanic to their young clerk. 

BJ, meanwhile, was hellbent on winning a stuffed seal (Erin had recently discovered sea lions at the zoo) that Hawkeye insisted was (a) too big and (b) something he could easily just purchase when he got home. “Klinger can sew it some outfits,” BJ insisted, finally prompting Margaret to take over pitching. The milk cans fell with a happy, metallic clatter and the seal was secured. The hug Margaret received in thanks lifted her off her feet and redeemed seasons of childhood softball games. 

Charles Emerson Winchester III had intended to avoid the carnival altogether; didn’t  _ someone _ need to remain professional and on call? But, it turned out, the various MASH units were rotating to allow each unit to visit. Staff from the 8063rd happily waved the 4077th’s personnel on their way, eagerly awaiting their turn. What the hell, he’d reasoned, maybe he would stumble over something interesting to include in his next letter to his sister. 

What he found was Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger with his head resting on his hands, watching the colorful whirl of a carousel. Dressed in signature style (fatigues from the waist down, something soft and barely pink as a shirt, earrings the color of a good wine), the young man with impossibly dark eyes (there was something of a wine-dark coloring there, too, or the ink used to pen musical compositions) and impossibly dark lashes appeared terribly young as the mingled colors flashed across his too open face.

Without meaning to, Charles came to stand at his side. There, he asked, “How old are you Corporal?” 

He saw Klinger return to himself from whatever he had been remembering in earshot of the calliope’s repetitive tune. “Major?”

“How old are you?” he repeated. 

“Twenty-one. Why?”

_ I would have guessed younger still _ . “And as you grew, the care of younger children was your responsibility, was it not?”

“Yeah. How’d ya know that?”

_ Because you never got to be a child _ . “Sisters?”

“Cousins,” Klinger corrected. “But I was the oldest - the only boy. My parents and my aunts and uncles worked odd jobs, crazy shifts. Far away sometimes. I had to take care of the girls.” 

He didn’t describe it, but in that moment, Charles knew what such care had required of a slender boy who would rather have watched baseball or sewed. He saw a young Klinger - eleven, maybe, or twelve - making grilled cheeses for a table full of chattering young girls. He saw him reading to them, cleaning them up when they got sick, packing their lunches, searching for their gloves. Loving them with his whole heart. 

“Then I went to work,” Klinger went on. “After my dad died. Jessa took over for me then.” He smiled. “Then the girls started working, too, and they had to walk through the flower district to get there. At the end of the week, they’d each spend a penny on one flower - a different flower for every girl - and wear it in their hair on the way home. They’d put them in a bowl of water in the front hall and I always knew if one of them hadn’t gone in. Different flowers every season. I called them my Penny Blossom Girls.” 

He remembered his audience. “Sorry. You didn’t wanna hear all that.”

“On the contrary. I asked.”

“Well, thanks then. Guess I kinda needed to talk about them.” 

Charles answered his smile. “I am certain they were -and remain - quite beautiful.”

“How can you know that, Major?” 

“They look like you, do they not?” 

Klinger thought that he was teasing. “Nice, Major.” Then he saw his eyes. “Oh. Thanks.” 

Charles inclined his head, closed his eyes. It wasn’t a bow but the gesture had a certain courtliness to it just the same. What it said was  _ I am acknowledging a truth. You are lovely.  _ If Klinger could have read his thoughts, he would have discovered this continuation:  _ Lovely and very young- and forced to grow up too soon  _ **_twice_ ** _ : at home then in an army training camp.  _

He had another vision then - as clear and as real as if  _ he  _ could read Klinger’s mind: the Penny Blossom Girls on a row of wooden painted horses, hair flying, laughing, their young charge with his arms at the waist of the youngest girl, holding her on the back of her steed.  _ And much as you wanted to ride, skirts flying,  _ (because he knew Klinger enough to know that the petticoats and pretty underthings weren’t  _ just  _ fodder for a discharge)  _ you were happy because  _ **_they_ ** _ were happy. That is, impossibly, how you are - how you were made _ . 

He wanted to honor this, but he wasn’t brave enough to tell the young man that he would go with him, now, on this silly ride they’d both outgrown in a mad tribute to his big heart. 

He was, however, brave enough for several other things: gypsy fortune telling that was patently absurd - especially since they kept trying to make each other laugh! - eating fried, suspicious things that Winchester swore would shorten his life, funhouse mirrors that gave Winchester Klinger’s tiny waist and Klinger his height, helping Mulcahy herd the orphans, sharing candy floss just a few shades darker than Klinger’s top… and throughout it all, Charles had to stop himself, more than once, on the verge of taking the young man’s arm. 

***

“You’ve been humming that tune all week, Charles,” BJ told him one evening after dinner. “What happened to you at the carnival?” 

Charles looked so flustered that BJ thought about feeling sorry for him… but the feeling passed. “Carnival?” He repeated the word as if it were entirely alien. 

“You can try to lie,” the surgeon from the surf and sun state offered. “But that tune isn’t from your record collection.” 

“I do not need to lie, Hunnicutt. Nor do I need to recount my evenings. Good day.”

BJ just chuckled as Charles strode into the sunshine; he’d seen just who it was that Charles had been trailing during their surprising night out. He’d seen, too, his moonstruck eyes, how he’d held himself - like a man trying to teach himself to walk on ice… or maybe a highwire. Hopefully the man’s background in thoracic surgery would pay off, thought BJ. His heart was definitely on the line. 

***

Charles sighed when that beloved voice came on the line; pain dropped away and he was, for just a moment, home. The call was limited to just six minutes, but he did not neglect the important civilities: asking after his family, asking for news. Then he told her what he had called for. 

“The antique dealer father uses, go through him. What is his name? Fustword? Fustworth? Yes, Fostworm! I will send you the money. You do not have to bargain with him - I know how you hate that.” He described what he wanted. “Yes, made in Toledo if at all possible. I want  _ you  _ to wrap and send it. I do not trust our Mr. Fostworm. I  _ will  _ tell you why when you find it. Call it a scavenger hunt with my secrets as the prize. What do you mean ‘is he pretty!?’” 

Hanging up, he laughed at his own silliness, but he didn’t call back to change his request. 

***

It was after an especially late and bloody shift that Klinger found the package on his bed, the stiff foil paper the color of butterscotch. The tiny glass creature inside was every color of carnival light, with glittering stars stamped into its glassy flanks. Klinger traced the pole rising from its center, the tiny details like its mane, its tack, the feathering around its hooves. Someone had held this image in his or her mind and loved it enough to reproduce it in rainbowed glass. 

A note accompanied the gift:

Max, 

I wish your childhood had permitted more carousel spins. I wish you had been spared this war. Most of all, perhaps, I wish we had ridden that carousel together and that I had placed my hands at your waist. This gift is a small thing, but, like you, it is from Toledo and beautiful. I hope it will remind you that there are happier times ahead. 

Charles 

***

Not trusting himself to speak, Klinger penned his own reply. 

Major, 

My whole tent is prettier because of my horse. Don’t worry about the carnival. The States are full of carousels- and you make me plenty dizzy all on your own. I hope you’ll keep doing it, though, if you want to, and that you’ll keep coming around. 

Max

P.S. I don’t know the rules because I’ve never done this before, but your eyes are my favorite color even if I don’t know what color they are. I hope that’s okay or that you’ll ignore it - and all the bad writing and spelling and stuff - if it’s not. 

***

Given the go-ahead by note, Winchester began to court the pretty Corporal in earnest … though not entirely without reservations. 

“You are aware, I assume, that I am far too old for you,” he told Klinger when they began to see each other. 

Klinger shook his head. “Too tall, maybe,” he conceded, teasing. “Too smart.” He got up on his toes, kissed the line of his jaw. “Too beautiful.”

Charles had never been called that before - something he once would have chalked up to the fact that it was a feminine descriptor - but there was nothing self-conscious in Klinger’s use of it; he really did find him beautiful, and this realization left Charles sweetly stunned. 

“You are the beautiful one in this relationship,” he corrected. “I told you so from the first. Truly, you are not concerned about the age difference? I do not wish to lead you anywhere you do not wish to go.”

Klinger’s eyes were as bright as the carnival midway. “Wherever you lead me, you’ll be there, won’t you, Major?”

“It follows, yes.” 

Klinger held out a hand. “Then that’s where I want to go.” 

And they went, together, for the rest of their lives. Whenever either one of them chanced to catch the music issuing from a carousel, he smiled. 

End! 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
